Jerzy,


Thanks for that very interesting article.


There are 38 members of the mailing list now. I am told that someone in
New Zealand is going to request a feed from which he'll forward to others.

My first encounter with Cohen... It was in 1976 when I was
a high school student. Late after midnite I was checking
convergence of some ugly series when I heard "Suzanne"
on the radio and, hm... I guess this was some kind of nirvana.
I grab my guitar and spend an hour trying to hum the tune.
Couple days later I found the Polish translation of text in
a jazz magazine - I didn't realize that this was the same song
but words went very well with the melody so I decided to use them.
First time I learnt the name of the author it was couple months
later when I accidentally grab a copy of "Songs of Leonard Cohen"
in bookstore and found the same words and melody.


Later this year worker's strikes broke out in Radom town.
This was a "prelude" to Solidarity movement which came four
years later. In 1976 the workers lost - they were severly
beaten by special police troops and hundreds of them were
jailed after show trials. Communist party organized mass
meetings on the football stadiums all across Poland during
which some "professional patriots" shouted against "warchols
>From Radom" (warchol=squabble, brawler).


About two years later an underground printing office printed a
collection of songs popular among dissidents called "Warchol's
Songbook". Four Cohen's song were included: The Partisan, Suzanne
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong, Famous Blue Raincoat. While choice of
Partisan may be understandable one may ask what the other three
(and other LC's songs in general) have in common with political
struggle.


 I think that because of the unique beauty of his poetry he gave
many of us faith, hope and a glimpse of some eternal reality during
that time of "propaganda of succes" when TV and newspapers tried
to turn the language into a meaningless set of words ("1984").
Maybe this explains tremendous popularity which Leonard Cohen
has in Poland.


My friend Jacek Kleyff - poet, painter and during the '70s
very important artist in Polish student counterculture
often performed Cohen's ballads during his concerts and
wrote two songs titled "Letters to Leonard Cohen".
I will try to translate them and post them later.


BTW - I think that it would be interesting to trace such cases
when Cohen, his poems or songs is mentioned in other songs or
poems.


PS. Many thanx for Dave Chalmers for answering my question
about "basic" LC albums and for Pete Harlan for the idea
of shipping some CDs from Europe to US. This would be
really helpful to spread LC-ism among infidels down here :-)
(BTW - Suzanne can you tell us how many subscribers this list
currently have?)